


Remembering

by teamfreefish (team_free_fish)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual JohnKat, Memory Loss, Puzzles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:16:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/team_free_fish/pseuds/teamfreefish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young man stands in his room. It's you. Except, you don't know who you are, where you are, how you got here--- anything, really. If it even is your room. The door is locked and the window is blocked. What will you do next?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Puzzle Box

A young man stands in his bedroom. It’s you. But who are you? In fact, you have no idea if it even is your room, who you are, what is going on, why you’re here, how you got here in the first place. You assume you’ll remember eventually. You have a feeling it’s going to be a long day. In fact, you don’t even know if it is day or not. The window has been blocked by the view of a steel wall. You walk to the door which has a poster of what you assume is a game, and you feel like you recognize, but it doesn’t quite click in your brain. The other walls are covered in what seems like awesome movie posters. Whoever you are, and if this is your bedroom, you clearly have good tastes in movies.

You try to open the door, but it’s locked. You walk to the bed and sit down. Whatever this is, you won’t be getting out for a while. Maybe if you had a key. You decide to figure out this room and you open one of the drawers of the dresser. Nothing, empty. You open the next few drawers, all empty until the last one, in which you find a small box. A puzzle box. Dark, wooden, and locked. The metal on the hinges is grey and untarnished, and the box glistens lightly when you turn it. On the top, there is a carving. The carving says:

_A golden moon, people with shells of white._

Below is an area to turn dials, golden and thin, and presumably twenty-six sided, each side with a letter. Seven spaces. You turn the letters. Random combinations. None of them seemed to work. Although, when the first letter is turned to ‘P,’ it clicks into place. You try to think of seven letter words that start with p. Python. Prancer. Pilgrim. Phantom. Prodigy. Program. None of them have anything to do with the carving on top. You rack your brain for anything of the sort, when one word comes up. _Prospit._ You have no idea where it came from, or why you thought of it, but when you rotated all the letters to spell it out, it worked. You assume it had something to do with how you got here, what happened, who you are. The box opened to reveal a small key. It was small and silver and just a key.

You set the box on the dresser and walk to the door. You insert the key into the lock of the door, and the it opens when you turn the knob. You look around the room one last time, slip the key into your pocket, and walk out the door, closing it behind you.


	2. The Troll

A young troll stands in his respiteblock. You are this young troll. You don’t know your name, your story, where you are, or if this is your respiteblock at all. All you do know is that a) it’s going to be a long night, and b) you’re pretty much fucked.  
  
You look around at the romantic comedy posters plastering the room, and then at the window. The window is blocked with steel. You check the door. It’s locked. You weren’t surprised by this because you just have this feeling that you’re actually pretty severely fucked right now.  
  
But despite that, you pace around the room, trying to think of something that might help you. All you can think of are questions. Is there a lusus anywhere around here? Where the hell am I? Who the hell am I? Useless questions you know won’t be answered.  
  
You look around at the utterly useless things, until you realize that there is a computer right in front of you that you can probably use to figure something useful out. Unfortunately, you have failed to remeber the password, probably because every personal memory you have is gone, and all you have is general knowledge and language. You have a feeling that it will be a long night (though you just assume it is nighttime because you sincerely hope the world hasn’t fucked you in that one small way, and made it be the glorious night).  
  
After a bit of grumblings and fumings, the door opens. A strange creature in blue pajamas walks in. It is pink, hornless, and looks oddly familiar.  
  
You know it likely won’t work, but you decide to ask it what the fuck it is, and to your surprise, it answers with the same question to you.  
  
You come to an agreement that you are probably from two completely different species, mostly because he is probably the weirdest semi-intelligent being you have ever seen, and because he thinks it’s weird to have grey skin, yellow eyes, and candy corn horns.  
  
He says whatever, you ask how the fuck he got in, and he answers something about a wooden puzzle box with a key.  
  
He shows you the key, you look at it with skepticism, and you let him know that you honestly have no idea what is happening, where you are, who you are, and other such ‘are’s. Neither does he, he informs you. You sigh and ask if he has a computer. He does. He leads you to the door, and tries to open it. Once again, it’s locked. He pulls the key out of his pocket, trying to unlock it. It doesn’t fit. You let out a rather audible “Fuck,” and begin pacing around in frustration.  
  
You remember what he said about there being a puzzle in his drawer. There would likely be another puzzle in your own block, and it would likely give you another key. You believe that makes sense. You begin searching.  
  
You look in the drawers of your furniture and behind objects, but no luck. Just as you were about to give up hope in finding the elusive, potentially-existent puzzle, the pink alien creature leans against your keyboard on accident, just oh-so-coincidentally causing the screen to display something.  
  
“John! Don’t touch my fucking stuff, you idiot nook-sniffer!” You cry, not even realizing that you had called the creature John. Must have been someone from the past that you’ve forgotten, and it must have slipped. Maybe he just reminds you of a John, even though that name doesn’t even match the six letter rule, and therefore probably wouldn’t be very likely, but you didn’t notice it, so you didn’t even bother thinking about it.  
  
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to. But I think we found the puzzle.”  
  
The screen displayed a message in white, glowing against a black background, and had five spaces for letters below. The message read:  
  
 _A game to play when the world is at an end, to prevent it, to cause it, or just to save your friends._  
  
You look at it, trying to figure out what it means, trying to remember something-- anything that might help.  
  
“Sburb. I saw a poster in my room.”  
  
“Your block, not mine. It would probably be different for me, anyway. Different species, remember? If anything, it would be a name like Sgrub or something.”  
  
The pink alien fell silent, trying to think of something else that might help you. You realized that the name probably was Sgrub, because you really fucking hoped that your thinkpan would at least remember one thing that might actually help you get out of this place and figure out what the hell is going on.  
  
You enter the five letters in, and it clears the screen. You get upset about the lack of key, but the pink alien thing says that the door is unlocked. You follow him through the door, and despite your wishes to keep the door open, it closes behind you.


	3. Treehouse

  
When you entered the room after what you believe to be your own, there was a weird grey-skinned alien with candy-corn-like horns and yellow eyes. Honestly, if this is how the situation is going to end up playing out, you honestly don’t know what to expect next.  
  
You found the alien dude’s puzzle and left the room. Through the same door you came out. Honestly, you were expecting the bedroom you were in before to be on the other side of the door, but instead, it was a completely different setting.  
  
The scenery is colorful. You had gone into a door and out to a forest. An unusual one, for that matter. The bark of the trees are blue, with pink leaves. You and the grey alien come to a particularly large tree. Dragon plushies hang by strings from the branches, and there is a cluster of what seems to parts of a building in the tree. Pretty much, a really massive tree house.  
  
As they climbed up to the treehouse, both you and the weird alien dude were silent. When you eventually reach the building, you try to break the silence.  
  
“You called me John, back there, in your room or whatever.”  
  
The alien looks at you for a moment, then turns away and continues to walk to an entrance you guys can use.  
  
“I don’t know why. Don’t ask if that’s your name because I don’t know. I don’t know if I know you, or what is happening, or why it’s happening. Just fucking accept that. We don’t know what’s going on, so let’s just get to wherever the fuck we’re supposed to go, and hope that we get magnificently lucky on every damn puzzle this thing throws in our faces, okay?”  
  
You nod and go through a door. No puzzle. It's still technically the same 'room.'  
  
The alien calls out to see if anybody is there. He says that this is somebody’s hive, but they’re not here. You assume that by hive he means house, but you could be wrong.  
  
You look at the colorful walls. They’re covered in chalk drawings, scales of some sort, more dragon plushies, books, and the most colorful rugs and fabrics one has ever imagined. You look at the nearly-intolerable display of colours for a while before noticing that your alien friend is looking rather upset.  
  
“Something the matter?”  
  
He sighs and begins to speak, “Her name was Terezi," he pauses, "She was blind.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“I don’t know how I know, I just do.”  
  
He looks almost on the verge of tears. You try to find whatever puzzle might be hidden in here. He begins to help. You look around the computer, under the rugs, until finally the alien suggests flipping through the books. In the pages of the third book you open, there is a small piece of paper that falls out.  
  
You let your friend know and begin to read it.  
  
 _Without eyes, but not without sight. A master of scales; the tipping, collecting, and balancing._  
  
There were six spaces. You find a stray piece of chalk and hand both items to your grey friend. He reads the note, and writes “Terezi” in the spaces. The note changed text. Instead of the riddle, it gave informational text on a silly thing called sylladexes.  
  
You read the new text, and attempt to describe it to your grey friend. He takes the note, and uses the newfound ‘captchalogue’ skill to keep it. You pull the house key out of your pocket and captchalogue that. It was easy. You instantly knew it was a skill you had at some point in the past, but had forgotten it. There’s a certain feeling one gets when they remember something long forgotten. You can only hope you’ll keep on remembering.  
  
You both head to the door leading out of the room and exit.


	4. Karkat

 

The next room was an actual room, rather than a large, outdoor wooden area. The room was not a respiteblock, but a human bedroom. The puzzle was found in the holes of the cinder blocks near the turntables. It contained some information on a place called Skaia and you and the pink thing continued.

The room after that was similar, however it was an actual respiteblock in a community hive. The puzzle, when solved, contained information on the strife specibus, which you were able to use, finding a sickle nearby. The pink alien took a hammer.

Every single time there was a puzzle, it seemed the slightest amount of memory was able to come back. At this rate, by the something-teenth room you might have some slight idea what is going on and who you are. You hope that the next few rooms will be as easy as the past few, but if your theory is correct, they will become progressively harder. The pink alien still knows nothing about you, and vice versa, making interactions awkward, and even more awkward because of the fact that you know just as much about yourself as he does about you.

You know that the rooms are those of people you knew, but have failed to remember. It was the one thing you were sure about. It was further confirmed by the next room. When you enter, you can’t help but feel sadness. Fear, friendship, betrayal, and the eventual growing apart. You feel it all at once. You look at the pictures of clowns on the walls, the horns on the ground, the one wheel device in the corner.

“What’s wrong?” Asks the pink guy.

“I don’t know,” You reply.

“Let’s find the puzzle and get out of here, the clowns are actually kind of creepy,” He says after a small pause.

You nod and look through the forgotten troll’s things. You can’t find the puzzle. Of course, it will likely turn up within the next few minutes of looking, but you start getting a horrible headache. And then there are the images. Blood, the sound of distant, yet nearing bullhorns, adrenaline-pushed panic. Then, the warm feeling of a friends arms, but the pulsing sweat of desperation. You begin to cry. You collapse on to the floor, and you hardly notice the pink alien dude asking if you’re okay. You want to answer. You want to tell him to fuck off, something, anything. You know you have to remember something, and you know it will be the answer to this room's puzzle. But you don't want to remember. Despite your resistance to remembering, you remember one thing. One word. You finally answer, even though all you can sputter is, “Karkat.”

“What?” He asks.

“My name.” You say.

“Oh, Karkat. Right.”

You calm down a bit. You attempt to pull yourself together, wiping your eyes with your sleeve. You swallow hard and wipe away the few remaining streaks of pink.

You look around the block once more and realize something.

"The guy who lived here," you pause, “he was my moirail.” You say, flatly.

“Your what?” He looks baffled.

“My moirail,” You repeat, wondering why he looks so confused.

“I don’t know what that is, but I’ve found the puzzle.”

“How do you not know what a moirail is? It’s basic cultural knowledge.” You are mildly annoyed, but honestly aren’t up for explaining that right now.

“It doesn’t matter. I found the puzzle, let’s solve it and get out of here,” he says, holding out a small engraved piece of metal.

You take the puzzle. You are able to solve it fairly easily. The answer was your own name.

“I think we’re remembering exactly what every room wants us to remember.” You say, trying to forget the images that played through your head only minutes before.

“What do you mean by that?” He looked confused, but more concerned about getting the hell out of the room.

“We’ve solved every single puzzle with nothing but the vague memories that seem like they might work. If I hadn’t remembered my name, we wouldn’t have solved this puzzle. If we hadn’t remembered anything, we would have been stuck, locked in our own respiteblocks like clueless prisoners waiting to be executed after a sentence of who knows how long, with no windows for light, no food , no water, nothing and no knowledge of the crime committed in the first place, nothing to take solace in or think of, just an endless amount of waiting, and our eventual deaths. We were supposed to remember.”

“So, in order to get out, we have to just keep going through rooms?” He asked, stating more than questioning.

“I don’t see any other way to get out.”

You stand up, and you nod your head towards the door. Neither of you glance back, you both just go straight ahead. Into the challenges ahead, and the only hope of escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I may update sporadically. I have a lot of stuff to do and I am a lazy person. :L

**Author's Note:**

> Had this idea and couldn't get it stuck out of my head. Apologies for sparse updates. 
> 
> Thanks to AnarchicMalcontent for being a very observant beta, and getting me to actually write chapters every so often.


End file.
